Architecture

Crowdfunding: Turning your reputation into money

Crowdfunding: Turning your reputation into money

The stack of black plastic cases, some of them sprouting wires, begged the question: What was PJ Conley building at his dining room table? High-tech tackle boxes? Electronic first-aid kits? Something nefarious? “This was actually my original one,” Conley said, grabbing the device he calls the RaspCarry, a protective case with a built-in screen and Bluetooth keyboard designed to hold the Raspberry Pi, a $35 no-frills computer that sells separately. Thanks in large part to the nearly $8,000 Conley raised this winter on Kickstarter, he has built and shipped 150…

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Crowdfunding’s many goals: from building schools to busting mayors

Crowdfunding’s many goals: from building schools to busting mayors

Crippled by mounting financial debt, father and son duo David and Brian Best had few options left to save the potato farm their family has operated in Tryon, P.E.I., since the early 1930s. It was a customer who dropped in to Best Acre Farms to buy seed potatoes that sparked the family’s current bid to save their livelihood – crowdfunding. “I told him I was pulling strings to find out how I can source money, and he said, ‘Well, you might try crowdfunding,’ ” said Brian Best. Best did just…

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Homeowners fight foreclosure through crowdfunding

Homeowners fight foreclosure through crowdfunding

(MoneyWatch) Can a crowd save a house? Homeowners facing foreclosure certainly hope so. Struggling borrowers are turning to new crowdfunding sites to raise money from friends, family and even strangers to keep up with their mortgage payments. Ruth Caspary, 45, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe after losing her job in 2009 as a visual effects artist. Finding a new job was tough, so instead she joined her husband’s dance instruction business, “Salsa with Juan,” as a marketing manager and dance instructor. Although her new career reduced her income, the two…

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Crowdfunding Lesson From Habitat: Empower Your Volunteers

Crowdfunding Lesson From Habitat: Empower Your Volunteers

Dave McMurtry is a player in Silicon Valley. I mean that in the very best sense. He is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and has spent much of his career in the tech community, including more than half a decade at tech giant Intuit. He more recently served as the CEO of Loomia, a social media company. In 2005, Dave wanted to take a break from his career to give back. As a pilot, his first choice was to volunteer some flight time to Doctors without Borders, but when he…

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Not surprisingly Kickstarter raises more money for artists than the NEA

Not surprisingly Kickstarter raises more money for artists than the NEA

During a session at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson asked Perry Chen, founder of Kickstarter, whether it was true that Kickstarter now funds more arts-related projects than the National Endowment for the Arts. The crowdfunding site has, Chen told Isaacson, funded over $600 million in arts projects. “And,” said Isaacson, “that might be now more than the federal government spent on the arts in a given year?” adding a bit later that “in some ways… you’ve invented something that does what the NEA used to do and…

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